Many gamers are acutely aware of the impending launch of Google's new live-streaming service YouTube Gaming, which will go head-to-head with Amazon's recently acquired Twitch.tv. After the last few months of beta testing, YouTube Gaming is finally set to leave beta later today to allow users from almost anywhere in the world to broadcast their own gameplay footage live to anybody who would like to watch. Google has just released the Android app, which serves as the guide and viewer for live shows and much of the recorded gaming content on YouTube. As usual, we've got the apk available for download, which may come in very handy since the Play Store will initially limit availability to residents of the US and UK. [Update: It seems availability isn't really limited after all, plenty of countries have access.]

What's New

For those who weren't invited to the beta and didn't download the "creator preview" release of the app, the Android experience for YouTube Gaming is currently centered on helping users find content to watch. It's basically a discovery and viewer app, for now. (More on that in a moment.)

If you've already tried out the app or read our hands-on post, there's really nothing too special to point out in v1.0. This release appears to be focused on fixing bugs and polishing up some wording and UI elements. Since this is the version that will go public later today, it's possible that more features and functionality will become available at that time.

Easter Egg

There is one new thing in this release that shouldn't be ignored. An Easter egg has been added. Tap on your profile picture at the top-right corner, then Settings. Enter the About screen and tap on the App version 5 times. This will rid the Action bar of its title and replace it with imagery of the classic game Asteroids. There doesn't seem to be any game or animation, just the visual, but it's still a cool homage to old-school gaming.

Teardown

Disclaimer: Teardowns are necessarily speculative and usually based on incomplete evidence. It's possible that the guesses made here are totally and completely wrong. There is always a chance that details may change or plans may be cancelled prior to the launch of a new feature discovered in a teardown. Much like rumors, nothing is certain until it's officially announced.

Screen Recording And Broadcasting From Android

As I mentioned above, the central roles of the YouTube Gaming app on Android appear to be discovery and consumption – that is to say, finding and watching videos. If you're actually looking to broadcast your game sessions (or other game-related video), you'll have to turn to opening the YouTube Gaming website on a computer. That's fine for PC games (and consoles with the right configuration), but it leaves most people without a good mechanism to live-stream their mobile gaming. Don't worry, Google doesn't plan to leave you out in the cold.

Buried beneath the somewhat atypical, yet totally Material-inspired interface of YouTube Gaming, there lies evidence that the app supports screen recording, and more importantly, live broadcasting. This will allow users to nab video of play sessions, record audio from both the game and their own commentary, and possibly even capture video of themselves while they play (the camera permission is there).

Judging by the strings, initiating a screencast begins by picking a single app to record, or allowing all apps to be a part of the session. Once activated, recording should continue until the user decides to end it. There are a couple of exceptions, like when there is no user input for a while, which will eventually timeout and shut down the session.

It's still not entirely clear if a live broadcast records a local copy, but that appears to be the case. If available storage on a device runs out, this can also end the session. There is a "health status" meter that gives some indication of how long a device can continue recording. There is also a power meter so you'll know if your battery starts getting too low.

Of course, once a screencast is going, there are a few other things broadcasters might want. It will be possible to toggle the front ("selfie") camera and microphone on or off to include commentary or a view of the player. The camera feed also offers special effects that can be applied to the video if desired. It seems like a live chat window with the viewers can also be enabled, but it's not clear whether it will be a part of the recording or not.

<plurals name="screencast_dialog_record_description_plurals">
<item quantity="other">This device has enough storage to record &lt;b>%1$d minutes&lt;/b> in this format.</item>
<item quantity="zero">This device does not have enough storage to record in this format.</item>
<item quantity="one">This device has enough storage to record &lt;b>%1$d minute&lt;/b> in this format.</item>
<item quantity="many">This device has enough storage to record &lt;b>%1$d minutes&lt;/b> in this format.</item>
</plurals>
<plurals name="screencast_status_recording_plural">
<item quantity="other">%1$d minutes of recording time left</item>
<item quantity="zero">No recording time left</item>
<item quantity="one">%1$d minute of recording time left</item>
<item quantity="many">%1$d minutes of recording time left</item>
</plurals>

Naturally, there are also some images to go along with some of the dialogs that pop up, but they don't really give away any additional details. Still, they are cool to take a look at.

screencast_completion_banner and screencast_info_dialog_banner

screencast_type_dialog_banner and welcome_dialog_banner

final_warning_dialog_banner

There aren't any clear signs about when screencasting will be enabled for everybody. I believe there's enough code and resources to suggest it's ready to go now, but my guess is that we won't see it until it has been more extensively tested. On the other hand, it might become available in the next few hours as the service goes live. We'll find out shortly.

Download

The APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app. The cryptographic signature guarantees that the file is safe to install and was not tampered with in any way. Rather than wait for Google to push this download to your devices, which can take days, download and install it just like any other APK.

Being the CEO of the biggest company in Gotham, I'm sure Mr. Wayne has dealt with his share of copyright suits. He knows what he's talking about here.
Still, doesn't make Google's method of dealing with such problems any less bullshit. In trying to protect the "copyrights" of big companies, they often infringe on the copyrights of the average person, AND their First Amendment rights... if you live in America. If not, refer to any similar declaration of the people's freedom of expression. If you don't have such basic rights wherever you life... fuck.
Anyway, that's only speaking of the claims that are half lawful, most of them aren't as they infringe on fair use. Google needs to get their shit together.

Hmm, the original announcement and Ron's post on Ars just yesterday said it was US and UK-only. Perhaps it's going to be a slightly larger mix. I wonder if it might just turn out to be English-only for the first version, or something like that.

utube gaming

available in india.

cooldude5500

Not for me.

siveZ

Available in Russia.

Rúben Santos

Same here in Portugal.

Leif Sikorski

I could also download it from the play store and the old videos work. What seems to be disabled for german users are live streams - I can't watch them at all.

It would be a bad start if they have country restrictions from the beginning.This way even more will stay at twitch and if they add more countries later all the hype and interest is already gone.

Marcel Ulbrich

Well, we have to thank old media for that. Unfortunately, the German TV networks sued and enforced that for YouTube live streaming, Google would need a broadcasting license. Weirdly enough, for most of the past live streams, this wasn't enforced, like one can watch Hangouts on Air, Google I/O and several other events. Also, this obviously only pertains to Google, because Germany hates them and since Twitch and other live streaming outlets are not yet known in #Neuland, they have not received notice of this ridiculous restriction.
Between this and the Gema issue, which means that Germans can only watch about 25 out of the top 100 most popular YouTube videos at any time and have more blocked videos than Iran, it's really getting ludicrous.

Thomas Larsen

No Android TV app?

Mark Curtis

At least it has cast support...

Google, you can't expect people to develop for your platform if you can't be bothered to do it yourself.

Galaxy366

How long until the website goes live? It's Aug 26th, 18:53 in the Netherlands.

I haven't had any problems using the official Twitch app lately. Yeah, you don't get that many setting options for Like notifications when a broadcaster is live and for peeps who broadcasts doesn't get much options to customize their channel (however that's why you set everything up on their site beforehand), but it is still great for chromecasting, floating vid, and everything.

I'm not like YouTube Gaming so far. It pretty much looks like YouTube, but soley for gaming. Also I can't seem to figure out why YouTube doesn't give me the permission to go live. Do you have to get a certain amount of subs to stream live or something?

Fatal1ty_93_RUS

Exactly, I don't use it for the same reason.
But in case if you need a decent Twitch app - I can recommend one

TDioWS

Oh lord, now we have a floating menu that opens from the profile pic? How many more navigation menus are we gonna get?

I chalk that up to experimentation. A lot of apps have some odd differences, and it's mostly Google trying different things. They opted not to do a nav drawer, so they next most common place to put options like those are in an overflow menu. In this instance, they replaced the overflow menu icon with a profile pic. I agree, it's not really intuitive, but I don't think this is the worst design decision... At least, this is nowhere near the lack of nav drawers in G+ and YouTube.

CT

Oh. Welcome players 2

WestIndiesKING

kind of bummed at the lack of background playback. Its on youtube not sure why its not on here.

Something's wrong. I can't stream live on YouTube Gaming. I get a page that comes up:
"You do not have permissions to view this page."- That really sucks. Looks like I'm going to have to stick with Twitch then.

Stefan Eckhardt

Not really limited after all... Except for us germans... Thanks GEMA! :(

HellPie

I also sent an email to you guys (as hellp****v[at]gmail.com) some time ago, on the old 0.6.2 version of YouTube Gaming, I was able to get the screencast service "kinda working".

Also the camera view had (because now on the latest version available I cannot get it to launch the recoding activity anymore) some really (horrible? stupid? awesome? to you the decision) Instagram-like filters (cyan, vintage, black and white etc etc)